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February 26, 2013

Set password recovery before your email is hacked

Imagine you are in the middle of something and your friend emails you an important Word doc which you badly need. You quickly open your email (for me, it's gmail), enter your user name followed by the password and kaput! It shows a 'wrong password'. You enter your login credentials again and once again get the same message. One more time, and one more time - still the same message! Frustrated? Well, there are only 2 possibilities, either you're typing with Caps Lock on or someone has hacked your email. The first option is still fine but if the second is true then your heartbeat will stop for a minute especially if this is your primary email and linked with all your accounts. Now what? Only one thing can save you - if you paid attention to those small yellow snippets in your gmail which asked you for a password recovery details.
You might have ignored the password recovery notification earlier, but if you're reading this post and still haven't set it then please do it right away after reading this post. It's very important to set password recovery before your email is hacked! You really won't get any second chance. In my case, gmail always sends me notifications after 3 or 4 odd months to confirm my phone number and alternate email address to inform me in case my account gets compromised. A lot of folks ignore this and simply click the 'remind me later' tab but that one minute of activity can save you hours of frustration later. Although this information is available on Google's support pages, I thought to put it up here on maktion so that you can protect your valuable email.